Of all the human fears, is this the greatest of them all?
Many of my clients suffer from fears like: losing their job, heights, confined spaces, authority figures, snakes, spiders and losing their loved one.
There is a common thread that runs through all these fears, one common link that seems to be a part of many fears.
I first noticed it when working with a client on her fear of heights. When we started to look more closely at her fear she moved from fear of height itself to fear of falling. It was not that she was worried about where she was in the moment, but more where she might be and what would be the result if she fell.
We did some work on her fear of falling, but that didn’t produce very good results. So we delved further inside and then something really fascinating emerged. What she was actually terrified of was:
Losing Control
Before the fear of falling came the fear of losing control which she believed would cause her to fall. As long as she had something solid to hold on to her fear of falling was less, but the moment she lost the means of controlling her situation she began to believe that falling would be inevitable.
Once we exposed this fear of losing control it opened up a huge can of worms. All the other situations in which her fear of losing control was dictating her beliefs and actions.
This client ran her own business and her fear was having a noticeable effect on her growth.
Sales Lost
She found it very difficult to telephone prospects because she knew that she did not have control of the outcome until they accepted the call. She would not be in control as she tried to get past the gate-keeper, she would not be in control until the prospect accepted her proposal for a meeting. The number of occasions when her imagination told her that she could lose control was just too large for her to even countenance making the call.
Similarly when a prospect said “no” my client would immediately believe she had lost control and back off.
The moment she suffered a rejection she would be losing control of another dream of making a sale.
Relationships Hampered
It was noticeable that my client only chose to start relationships which she believed she would be able to control. If the other person was a strong character she would quickly lose interest no matter how many other parts of the relationship looked promising.
One day she asked me, rather coyly: “do you think I’m a control freak?”
That put me on the spot because in a negative sense she was because of her fear of losing control. But in the sense that she craved the power of being in control she was not. I opted for telling her that I didn’t think she was a control freak, but that she had to be aware that some people might see her that way if she didn’t take action to calm her fear.
That was enough motivation for her. We immediately set to work using EFT to help her to get to grips with this very pervasive fear. When we started she stated that her fear of losing control was at a level of nine out of a possible ten. At our first session we got this down to seven out of ten.
We are still working on this fear, it is gradually losing its grip on her. But it has invaded so many areas of her life that it will probably take several more weeks before we are able to winkle it out of all the beliefs that are hindering her life.
The good news is that she is enjoying new freedom in many areas already and has become a much more positive person.
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